Hello all. I'm pretty much a newbie to card games and deck building, but I've been playing LOTR LCG for a while now and I'm getting better at deck-building and can beat the easier scenarios but Dol Guldur seems to be impossible for solo players like myself, even those with quite a bit more experience. So I thought I'd open this thread up to some suggestions about how I can put something together that *might* beat Dol Guldur. I've read through a few other threads but if anyone has any general deck building strategies for newbies I welcome those as well.

I've just succeeded myself in beating Dol Guldur solo for the first time. My strategy went as follows:

- run three heroes from the same sphere to avoid "dead" card draws caused by the imprisonment of a hero

- this means running Spirit as it is the strongest sphere by far

- I went with Eowyn, Frodo and Dunhere as these seem the strongest hero options within Spirit (this will change of course with the new Glorfindel)

- I ran a bunch of the fairly obvious Spirit choices (Test of Will, Arwen, Elrond's Counsel, Galadhrim's Greeting, the best cost 2 allies, Northern Tracker, Stand and Fight, Dwarven Tomb, Ancient Mathom, etc). I didn't run Hasty Stroke but I sorely regretted this - there are a lot of painful shadow effects in this scenario.

- I tried to focus on cost 2 allies as you can pay for them first turn with just the two heroes. Northern Tracker you need to save up for over two turns, but he is likely to be vital to clear locations and also to fight effectively.

- I ran Gandalf as he seems the best way to import some muscle to kill the Nazgul

- I also splashed in some Leadership off Song of Kings, in order to run Steward of Gondor (too good to pass up on), Sneak Attack (ditto), and Dunedain Mark (to give the option, if the encounter deck permitted, of keeping threat low and boosting Dunhere to attack the staging area repeatedly - though I did not actually get this strategy to work). This does open up the likelihood of useless draws if SOK does not come out, but I think on balance you need the possibility of the Leadership cards.

I make no claims for this as the best strategy for this quest, and I only notched 1 win out of 5 attempts which is hardly overwhelming success. I am sure that there are better ideas and better strategies out there.

I still feel that winning consistently is likely still impossible at the moment, because of the random prisoner problem and because the encounter deck (particularly the initial draw of guard cards) can make things so difficult. I also feel that this quest places the greatest demands on in-game choices and tough decision-making - it's much more than just a deck-building challenge.

My final advice would be to persist - the satisfaction you will get from winning for the first time will make up for all the defeats and all the reshuffling!

I said many times and over this is not a fun quest to do solo.

But anyways, I like your thinking. If you add Leadership to the deck, Fresh Tracks are a neat addition, especially in conjunction with Dúnhere. Can save a huge trouble coming from undefended attacks by low threat threshold enemies. Killing the Nazgul really seems the biggest problem with Spirit only but you've mentioned the solutions and I cannot think of better ones unless one is to incorporate Song of Battle - which would be stretching things too far surely (unless, again, you swap Leadership for Tactics which is probably a bad idea).

No matter how good your strategy is though, you still need a super lucky set of set-up cards.

if you look near the bottom of the page you will find a thread called mega thread- i started it to collect advice on guldur-

it didnt really take off but it might help

rich